


Bringing Up Lady

by MissSusanVance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 1930s AU, Comedy, F/M, bringing up baby homage, screwball comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSusanVance/pseuds/MissSusanVance
Summary: Stannis meets  a tame direwolf, gets arrested, and meets a screwy redhead who falls in love with him.





	Bringing Up Lady

**Author's Note:**

> Tommyginger and I think that Sansa and Stannis are perfect for 1930s screwball comedy. So here's Stannis and Sansa in my favorite movie, Bringing up Baby. Thank you, Tommy, for looking this over for me!

Miss Sansa Stark had no idea how she’d gotten into such a rotten mess. Only a few days ago, if someone had told her she’d be running around the Connecticut woods dragging zoologist (or was it archeologist, she could never remember the difference) Dr. Stannis Baratheon around behind her on the trail of a direwolf from Siberia she would have smiled politely, as she backed slowly away from such an obviously insane individual. 

But here she was, wondering around the wilds near Westlake behind the good doctor, who was carrying a rope with a slipknot tied at the end to match her butterfly net. And she only had herself to blame. She loved him; it came on suddenly but oh, so completely. And his fiancé Miss Florent, his museum, all of it could go hang; she wasn’t letting him go! 

It had all started so innocently. She’d been sitting at the bar in the Algonquin Hotel waiting for Mr. Luwin, the lawyer who had handled her late father’s business affairs and that her mother had kept on after Father’s passing. Mother had been busy, so she’d asked Sansa to meet Mr. Luwin and discuss the million-dollar endowment they’d been planning to donate to either the Met or the Stuyvesant Museum of Natural History. 

She’d set her drink down on the bar top when it had tipped off the edge and spilled on the floor. Before anyone could clean up the mess, a tall man had slipped and fallen, squashing his top hat with his derriere. 

“Oh, I’m so, so sorry! Are you alright?” Sansa gasped, hopping up and stooping down to help the man stand up. He was really very tall, she thought, looking up at him. His cheeks had two spots of red on them, and he looked around, embarrassed, trying to see if anyone was laughing. 

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, as he picked up his top hat and tried in vain to push it back into its proper shape. 

“Well, better a bruise to your pride than a broken bone, as my nurse Nan used to say!” Sansa quipped, trying to put the man at ease. But this was easier said than done, judging by the scowl he shot at her. 

“Really, sir, I do apologize. If your party isn’t here yet, won’t you let me buy you a drink to make up for what happened?” 

He grumbled and looked uncomfortable, but it turned out the man he was meeting hadn’t yet arrived, so the gentleman, who introduced himself as Dr. Stannis Baratheon, ended up joining her for a drink. 

Well, this and that happened, including a mishap where Sansa had torn his coat and her dress was somehow ruined. She and Dr. Baratheon had ended up having to flee the Algonquin with their clothes in tatters, walking out of the lobby just as Mr. Luwin walked in. Such an embarrassing occurrence had never happened to her in her entire life. She’d always prided herself on being a lady, and ladies never walked out of hotels with the entire back of their dress torn, a gentleman walking so closely behind her she could feel the warmth of his body so that no one would see her drawers…it was just too, too awful! Stannis seemed to not want to further their acquaintance once the night ended, however, which was a shame because there was something about him that made Sansa want to see him again. She resolved right then and there that she would. 

Her opportunity came the very next day. How Robb ever got the idea to send her a direwolf she’d never guess! Well, she could really; direwolves were the old Stark family sigil, back when such things were common. But to send one to New York City, even a tame one! Robb had gotten some harebrained ideas in his day, but this one took the cake. Thank heaven she’d met a zoologist the night before. 

The phone call had not gone well. “A direwolf?” Stannis said. “Miss Stark, this is ridiculous. Putting aside the fact that I’m a paleontologist, not a zoologist, I’m not getting involved in a silly joke at my expense.”

“I’m not joking! I do have a direwolf here in my apartment! You need to come help me take her to my cottage in Connecticut!”

“True or false, Miss Stark, I regret to tell you that’s your problem.” 

“If you refuse to help me, I’m coming to get you and drag-“ Sansa had been walking as she talked. Suddenly, she tripped over the telephone cord and fell, hitting the floor with an “ooof!”

“Sansa! What happened? Is it the direwolf?” 

Sansa pushed herself up with one hand, putting the phone to her ear with the other. “No, Stannis I just…” she trailed off “oh the direwolf! Oh, my God!” she shrieked, swiping the coffee pot off the table so it made a terrific crash. She could hear Stannis shouting on the phone. Better make this good, she thought. 

“Ohh!” she groaned and thrashed around on the floor. When she heard Stannis shout “Sansa! I’ll be right there!” she smiled and hung up the phone.

The upshot of that conversation was she and Stannis ended up driving the direwolf, Lady according to Robb’s letter, to Sansa’s cottage in Connecticut. This and that happened, including the last bone Stannis needed for his brontosaurus skeleton going missing. Finally she and Stannis were wandering the woods, looking for an escaped giant wolf. 

Stannis had insisted on walking in front of her, to protect her he said. Sansa spluttered as a branch snapped back after he passed and smacked her in the face. “Stannis, don’t you think I better go first?”

“Of course not, what if you fell or got hurt?”

Sansa dodged another flying branch and rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Stannis.” She decided to get down and crawl to avoid any more smacks. 

“Sansa we-“ Stannis turned and looked around. “Sansa where are you?”

“Down here.” 

Stannis shook his head. “You’re crawling through poison ivy, you know.”

“Well aren’t you going to help me up?”

“Oh, no, you keep that to yourself.”

“I bet you wouldn’t treat Miss Florent like this!” 

“Miss Florent knows better than to get into poison ivy,” grumped Stannis.

“Huh, I’ll bet poison ivy runs the other way when it sees her!” 

And so the night went, eventually involving her mother Mrs. Catelyn Stark, the local police, the circus and double dose of direwolves. Sansa could honestly say she’d never had a day like it!

 

 

Stannis leaned against the scaffolding, rubbing his forehead. The past two days had been a disaster. His life had been perfectly ordered and laid out; he’d been this close to completing his brontosaurus skeleton, he’d been set to marry his fellow paleontologist Selyse Florent and secure a million dollar endowment for the museum. Then Sansa Stark had come into his life like a whirlwind, leaving nothing that had been there before whole in her wake. 

“There can be no marriage, Stannis,” Selyse had said. “I certainly can’t marry a man who gets arrested, frees a man-eating direwolf from a circus and who loses a million dollars all in one day.” She’d looked coldly at him through narrowed eyes. “I should have known it all along; you’re just a butterfly!”

 

Honestly, it was for the best, not marrying Selyse. One of the things Sansa left in her wake was his complacency about a marriage without feelings between the couple. He and Selyse had been set to marry and become partners in science, just like the Curies; but now, after meeting a certain cockamamie redhead, the thought suddenly had lost its appeal.  
With a sigh, Stannis turned and climbed back up the scaffold built next to his dinosaur; he could enjoy this, at least until the museum fired him for losing the only brontosaurus intercostal clavicle and a million bucks all in one day.

Suddenly, the door swung open and Sansa ran in. “Stannis! Stannis!” She looked around and sighted him on top of the scaffold. “Look! I found it!” She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a white object and waved it. Stannis squinted. Was it…

“The bone! I found it! Are you coming down?” Sansa cried. “No, wait, I’ll come up to you.” A ladder lead up to the skeleton’s back; before Stannis could stop her, Sansa had climbed right up it. Stannis cringed as the ladder swayed slightly. “I wanted to tell you, too that I persuaded Mother to reconsider and give the million dollar endowment to the museums. But that’s not the most important thing I wanted to explain to you about yesterday. ” 

“Sansa, the less said about yesterday the better,” he muttered. “But thank you for bringing the bone. I’m very grateful for how you convinced your mother to reconsider. But if you’d just climb down, very carefully-“

“No, Stannis, I want to explain.” She gave him such a sweet smile that Stannis forgot why he’d been annoyed with her to begin with; he had a habit of doing that. “You see, all the crazy things I did yesterday…with Lady, and with my mother…I did all of them to keep you near me.” She glanced down, blushing. “I never felt such a connection with anyone before so quickly, and I just couldn’t let you go until we could figure it out. I know I’ve been a horrible pest-” 

“That’s just the thing, Sansa,” Stannis cut in. “Yesterday was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life!”

“Really? Then you aren’t mad at me? You like me, maybe just a little?”

“Sansa, it’s more than that. I-I think I’m in love with you!”

“Oh Stannis!” she sighed. “Stannis, stop swaying, you’re making me dizzy.”

But Stannis wasn’t swaying; it was the ladder. Sansa screamed in fright, as Stannis made a snap decision. “Come on, Sansa! Jump up here!” She climbed onto the back of the brontosaurus and Stannis grabbed her hand. Just as he pulled her up, the skeleton gave an ominous groan; in the next second it collapsed and Sansa was hanging in mid air. Stannis pulled her up onto the scaffold with a grunt.

“Oh, Stannis! I’m so, so sorry!”

All Stannis could do was sigh, and pulled his girl into a hug.


End file.
